


Of Bedrooms and Mandatory Breakfasts

by kindness_to_the_rejects



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Brothers, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 05:12:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15526785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindness_to_the_rejects/pseuds/kindness_to_the_rejects
Summary: Mr. and Mrs. Jensen begin the process of getting Justin his own bedroom, starting with getting him a new bed. The only problem is, Justin's not actually sure he wants his own room. He tries to figure out what he wants. Clay assists, mostly.





	Of Bedrooms and Mandatory Breakfasts

It started with getting Justin a new bed. Or rather, a bed. He technically hadn’t had a bed to call his own for the past five months, so it’s not as though this bed would be replacing an old one. He liked Clay’s couch alright and hadn’t even really let himself consider receiving anything else to replace it. Until Mr. Jensen – Matt, he was supposed to call him Matt now – brought it up at one morning at their first mandatory family breakfast.

It was two weeks after the Tyler fiasco. Mr. and Mrs. Jensen were shaken up over the fact that both of their sons, the one they’d known eighteen years and the one they’d known six weeks, had been within twenty feet of a machine gun, so they were keeping an eye on them. A very close eye. 

The boys had been confined to the house every second of the first weekend after the dance, except for a few hours on Saturday when Matt drove Justin to an AT&T store and bought him his own iPhone 8 and put him on the family plan. Justin had protested he really didn’t need to do that, but Matt had waved him off. He’d even bought him a new case for it. 

Mr. and Mrs. Jensen – Matt and Lainie – insisted the boys use their phones to call them the minute they got home from school every day. They had to be home for dinner together every night, non-negotiable. And family breakfasts were now a thing, where everyone had to come together and talk about where they would be and when during the upcoming day. 

“Oh my god, they’re really going overboard this time,” Clay had complained to Justin up in his room, after hearing about the new breakfast rule. 

“They’re probably worried because their son almost got shot in the face, dumbass,” Justin said. He shrugged. “Besides, I love breakfast. Most important meal of the day.”

Clay groaned. “Is this how this sibling thing is going to go?” he asked. “You’re the goody two-shoes child and I look bad in comparison?”

“You don’t need me to make you look bad, Jensen,” Justin said. “But yeah, probably.”

Clay threw a pillow at him. 

That had been last night. This morning, Justin came barreling down the stairs as he usually did, but had to pause a minute in the doorway of the kitchen when he saw all the food laid out on the table. There were pancakes, bacon, fruit, jam, toast, coffee, and orange juice. Lainie noticed his surprise from where she sat at the table, reading on her tablet, and laughed. 

“Don’t expect this every day,” she said, gesturing to the feast around her. “Most days it’ll probably be us just eating cereal together. But Matt and I thought it would be nice to make our first mandatory family breakfast something special.”

Justin slid into his seat and smiled at her. “Thanks, Mrs. Jensen. And if you ever want me to help make stuff – I mean, I can make pancakes pretty well. And everyone can make toast.”

“There’s that goody two-shoes thing I was talking about,” Clay said, entering the kitchen and taking the seat between Justin and his mom. He reached for a piece of toast. 

Justin flushed slightly. “No one says “goody two-shoes,” Jensen, not unless they’re a little girl from a hundred years ago.”

Clay gave him a look. “Fine – kiss-ass, then, is what I meant.”

“Clay,” Laine chided. “Justin is not being a kiss-ass, he’s being polite.” She turned to Justin. “Thank you so much for offering, Justin. Maybe sometime in the future you could help me or Matt make breakfast. I’d like that. And, please, call me Lainie.”

Justin nodded and flushed again, then loaded up his own plate. The Jensens didn’t mess around with breakfast. The pancakes were huge and fluffy, the bacon was perfectly crispy, and the syrup was actually the real stuff, from Vermont or some shit. He almost had to contain himself from wolfing down everything as fast as possible. So he was distracted, spreading apricot jam on his toast, when Matt brought up the new bed.

“Does that sound alright, Justin?” Matt asked. 

“What?” Justin asked. He dropped his toast on his napkin. “Sorry, I missed what you said, um, Matt.”

The name still felt clunky coming out of his mouth, but he forced himself to use it. He caught Matt and Lainie sharing a pleased look, quickly, before Matt turned back to him.

“I was saying that one of my department colleagues approached me, knowing I was looking for a bed, and said his daughter has moved out and won’t need hers anymore. He asked if I wanted it, and I thought it would be a good idea. It’s only a twin, though, is that alright?”

Justin just looked at him for a moment. “Umm…” he said. “I mean, if you want it, I think it sounds great.”

Matt looked like he was struggling not to smile. Clay rolled his eyes. “The bed’s for you, Justin,” he said.

“Ohhhh!” Justin said. He laughed. “Oh, right. Yeah, I mean, that sounds awesome. If it’s no trouble. And it’s free?”

Matt nodded. “It’s no trouble at all, and yes, Rupert is giving it to me. He’s selling me the frame to go along with it.”

“Oh, you don’t have to spend – “

Matt put up a hand to stop him. “Parents spend money on their children, remember?” he asked, giving Justin a kind look. They’d gone over this, at length, in the car on the way to the AT&T store the other day. “We want to do it, Justin. And besides, we need to provide you a bed to be considered fit parents. I’m pretty sure providing a place to sleep is the bare minimum we can do.”

Justin laughed and nodded. “I’d love it, then,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a twin. I don’t really care about that.”

“Excellent,” Matt nodded cheerfully. “I’ll tell Rupert today, and tonight after dinner, you boys can go with me to his house and help me pack it and the frame into the truck.”

“What truck?” Clay asked. “We don’t have a truck.”

“I’m borrowing a truck from Mr. Holt, next door,” Matt said.

Justin’s stomach dropped a bit. It sounded like Matt was going to a lot of trouble. “Oh, you don’t have to – “

“Oh my god,” Clay said, exasperated. Matt shot him a warning look. 

“I think what Clay is trying to say,” Lainie said, “Is, Justin, please don’t let us hear the phrase, ‘You don’t have to’ again, at least until the end of breakfast, okay? We don’t have to do anything – we want to.”

Justin nodded, abashed. He felt embarrassed, but he also felt nice. Like he liked them taking care of him.

 

That evening, after the excursion in Mr. Holt’s truck, Justin found himself staring at his very own bed. It had been a real bitch getting it up the stairs, and then another real bitch taking the couch out and squeezing it into Matt’s office down the hall. But now here it was, tucked against the side wall in Clay’s room, where the couch used to be. 

Clay had run out to return Mr. Holt’s truck. Mr. Jensen plopped a couple of pillows down on top of Justin’s bed and smoothed down the blanket with his hand. 

“This is just an old blanket we’ve had for years,” he said, looking at Justin. “It was one of the first things we got when we bought the house. This weekend, we can run to Target, or the mall, and get you your own comforter. Something a teenage boy might actually like.” The blanket was a dark beige color, with tasteful brown stripes running along the bottom. But it was fluffy and soft when Justin sat down on it. He shrugged and looked up at Matt. 

“I like it,” he said. 

Matt cast him a doubtful look. “But you might like other ones better,” he said. “We’ll see what we find. Unless of course, you want to wait, and buy a blanket for a double bed later on. I was thinking we could get you a double bed when you move to your own room.”

Justin’s stomach lurched a bit and he glanced up at Matt. “My own room?”

Matt nodded slowly. “Well, Lainie and I were thinking you could take my office, down the hall. You didn’t think we’d make you and Clay share forever, did you?”

“I…” Justin hadn’t honestly put much thought into it. He tried to force himself to take everything only one day at a time, and not think, or hope about, too much concerning his future with the Jensens. Today, he had gotten a bed. And that was where he stopped expecting anything else for a while. 

“I didn’t really think about it,” he said honestly to Mr. Jensen. “I don’t mind sharing a bedroom with Clay. And I mean, don’t you work in your office a lot?” Mr. Jensen often spent a couple of hours there in the late afternoons or evenings when his classes were over, grading papers and making lesson plans. 

“Yes,” Matt said. “But I also have an office at school where I can do most of that. And I can always move my desk downstairs to the study where Lainie’s is, and work there like she does.”

Justin didn’t have anything to say to that. He had only just gotten used to the different names for rooms that the Jensens used. They had the TV room, the tiny room at the front of the house which was full of windows, one loveseat, and the TV. They had the family room off the dining, with couches and the fireplace. No one ever ate in the dining room though, they usually ate in the kitchen. And then they had the study across the hall, behind the glass doors in the hallway, which held bookcases, yet another couch, and Lainie’s desk by the window, where she occasionally worked on things. He didn’t see how there would be room to squeeze another desk in there. 

“It’ll work out, Justin,” Matt said, clapping him on the shoulder. “It might take me a couple of weeks to pack up my books and things, but then we’ll start work on your new room. Everything will be up to you – the paint, the bed, what you want to put on the walls. Whatever you want, kiddo, okay?”

Justin nodded slowly. “Yeah, okay,” he said. He felt so overwhelmed, he didn’t even know what to say. How the fuck could he be expected to pick a paint color when he’d spent his life sharing one-room apartments with his mom, sleeping on someone or others’ couch, or sleeping in the Walker’s pristine pool house? What the fuck did he know about putting together a bedroom?

But he agreed anyway. “That sounds great, Matt,” he said. “Thank you.”

 

Except, he started to realize later, it didn’t actually sound great at all. He kept going over the conversation again and again in his mind. He knew he should just be grateful to Matt and Lainie for offering him his own room. So what the fuck was wrong with him? Why, whenever he thought about moving into the room down the hall, did his stomach sink? Shouldn’t he be happy to have his own room, for once in his life?

He grew annoyed with himself and excused himself for the night early, while the others were all still watching TV. He showered and then plopped down on his new bed, with wet hair and sweatpants on. He played with his new phone for a while, logging back into the Instagram and Twitter accounts he’d had months ago, before he ran away, before he came back. He downloaded a mindless game he’d seen on Clay’s phone, and started to play it. 

Clay came in after a while, and got ready for bed himself. They talked a little, about nothing much, but mostly shared companionable silence before Clay got in bed and flipped open one of the comics he kept on his bedside table. Justin waited a couple of minutes. Then he said, “Did you know your parents were planning on me getting my own room?”

Clay didn’t look up from his comic. “Yeah, I guess I thought that might happen eventually, now that you’re not just crashing here temporarily.” He turned a page. “Are you going to be in Dad’s study?”

“I guess.” There was quiet for a moment, before Justin asked, “I mean, doesn’t he need it though?”

Clay sighed and laid his comic down next to him. He laid down on his back and stared up at the ceiling. “He must not need it that bad if he’s offering it to you.”

“It’s just…I mean, I’m not even adopted yet, isn’t this moving a little fast?”

Clay glanced over at him, a furrow showing up between his eyebrows. “The adoption should be filed in the next month. It’s not that far away.”

“Yeah, I know. But for now, I’m not even officially, like, a member of the family.”

“So?”

“So,” Justin sighed, frustrated. He didn’t know what he was trying to say. “Like, shouldn’t we wait? I feel bad, your parents going to all this trouble, when I’m not even, like…I don’t know.”

Clay sat up and swung his legs over the side of his bed, looking intently at Justin. “What are you saying, exactly?”

“I don’t know!” Justin said, throwing his hands up. “It’s just, like moving really fast. I’ve been here two weeks since juvie and I’m already getting my own room? I don’t know what to do with my own room!”

“Justin,” Clay said, sounding exasperated. “There’s nothing you do, it just means you get to have your own space. Mom and Dad thought you’d like it, and they don’t give a shit if the adoption isn’t technically official yet. It is for them. Like, you’re already in. They wouldn’t have wanted to adopt you if they didn’t feel that way already.”

Justin was quiet a minute. He didn’t look at Clay, instead looking up at the ceiling. “Feel what way?” he asked. 

Clay paused, considering. “Feel like…you’re our family now. Like they want to help you, and you know, do parental shit for you. Give you your own room, put you on the family plan. That kind of thing.”

Justin turned his back on Clay and stuffed his face into his pillow. There was silence for a moment, before Clay asked, “You’re not crying again, are you?”

“Fuck you,” Justin said, voice muffled. “It’s been a fucking emotional couple of months.”

“Yeah, you have a point there,” Clay said. There was silence a moment more, before he said, “Listen, if you do feel like this is happening too fast, you should just tell them. I get it if this is like, too many changes at once. You can always wait a couple months before you move into your own room. Or I guess…I mean…” Clay sighed. Justin turned around and looked at him. Clay was biting his lip, looking conflicted. 

“What?” Justin demanded. 

“Or…you don’t even have to have your own room. If you don’t want,” Clay said hurriedly. “I mean, I get it. If you want to stay in here. It’s, I mean…I want you to do what you’re comfortable with, and all that.”

Justin stared at him. “Are you offering to share your room with me for, like, forever?”

Clay flopped back on his bed. “I take it back,” he groaned. 

Justin laughed. “You can’t take it back, now I know you want to live with me forever and forever. That’s really cute, Jensen.”

Clay half-sat up on his elbows and held up an admonishing finger. “Not forever, only until we both graduate, which let me remind you, is like a year and a half away. We’d only live together for a year and a half.”

“Yeah, until we came back for breaks, like Christmas and summer and stuff,” Justin said. “I mean, assuming I even graduate, and make it into college.”

“Shut up, of course you will,” Clay said. “Because I’ll be tutoring you and I always pass the people I tutor. Plus, you can go to Dad’s college if nothing else, I’m sure he could get even you in. And tuition’s free for children of faculty.”

“Okay, first, who said you’ll be tutoring me?”

“Um, your near-failing grades? And my straight A’s?”

“Fuck off. Second, I automatically get free tuition? Damn,” Justin nestled back into his pillows, brought his new blanket up around his neck. “Maybe that’s the whole reason I said yes to the adoption, actually. Get those perks.”

Clay snorted and pulled his own covers over himself. “Yeah, I’m sure that was it.” He reached for the lamp next to his bed and flicked it off. “Good night, you idiot.”

“Sweet dreams, dumb ass.”

**Author's Note:**

> Notice, I'm just skipping right over the whole "Justin is using heroine again" thing, because I want to and no one can stop me. Can they all just be happy, please? And stay that way for a hot sec?


End file.
